Web browser

A Web browser is a piece of software that enables a user to retrieve and render HTML documents from Internet servers around the world. This network of documents is known as the World Wide Web.

Communication between the web server and the browser uses primarily the HTTP protocol. Most browsers also support other protocols, such as FTP, Gopher, and HTTPS, a secure sockets layer encrypted version of HTTP.

Some of the more popular browsers include additional components to support Usenet news and e-mail via the NNTP, IMAP and POP protocols. Most web browsers have the ability to save a file of bookmarks for sites you have or will want to visit often.

Early web browsers supported only a very simple version of HTML. The rapid development of proprietary web browsers led to the development of non-standard dialects of HTML, leading to problems with Web interoperability. Modern web browsers (such as Mozilla, Opera, and recent versions of Internet Explorer) support standards-based HTML and XHTML (starting with HTML 4.01), which should display in the same way across all browsers.

Examples of web browsers:

Internet Explorer
Mozilla
- Netscape Navigator (Now based on the open source software Mozilla)
- Beonex
- IBM Web Browser for OS/2
- Aphrodite
- Galeon for GNOME
- Skipstone
- K-Meleon for Windows
- Chimera for Mac OS X
Opera
Konqueror
Amaya
iCab
OmniWeb
Dillo

Text-based web browsers:

Early browsers which are no longer developed: